Presented By: Caleb Neeley, Clemson University
Co-Authors: Christopher Eck, Oklahoma State University
Raghupathy Karthikeyan, Clemson University
Dale Layfield, Clemson University

The Pew Research Center notes that those in today's undergraduate age group had less work experience in their teens when compared to previous generations. To complicate matters, MENTOR, a national nonprofit that advocates mentoring, found that mentoring of Gen Z is declining. Therefore, providing this generation with mentoring opportunities that focus on workforce development is pivotal. This project aimed to investigate undergraduate mentoring through purposeful pairings with graduate students, as “Mentoring at its very core is a learning relationship.” Specifically, two objectives guided this inquiry 1) describe the mentor-mentee relationship between online graduate students and on-campus undergraduate students and 2) identify student's perceptions of the mentoring process through the graduate/undergraduate class activities with anecdotal data. In Axelrod's “10 Steps to Successful Mentoring,” the importance of understanding your partner was highlighted. Each student developed narrated bios that were used for purposeful pairing and shared to introduce the mentors and mentees. Two major projects in the course included an experimental salinity tolerance assessment project using hydroponic growing systems that resulted in a series of digital projects and a team grant writing project led by the graduate mentors. Axelrod stated that a mentor should “experiment with new approaches,” and with the mentor's previous experiences, the work on the salinity experiments engaged the students to many new concepts using the hydroponic kits. Another aspect Axelrod discussed about successful mentors was in “determining the right type of questions to use.” The grant writing team project gave the mentors an opportunity to use previous experiences that the mentees lacked to develop a grant proposal that used a variety of critical thinking skills. This presentation will aim to share the outcomes of the experience along with transferable recommendations for purposeful mentoring relationship to develop essential technical skills for the future workforce.